Pictures!

I didn't realize the last post actually posted... ha!  Technology evades me again.  Here are pictures, for real this time.  

Chris in our living room.

 Dining room, opposite of the living room.  Lots of bare walls still.

Hallway to kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom.

 Yey, a real kitchen!  Minus an oven.  Both the kitchen and living room go onto the balcony.

We lucked out, we even got a place with a bathtub.

 Bedroom, other room not shown.

Nighttime view from our place.  We walk on that bridge to go to the riverside park.  It's lovely.

In the daytime, we see lots of trees.  We like our new place!

The Sad and the Happy

Admist the changes, the good things happening in our new lives in Taipei, the excitement and endless sense of new and wonderful places to explore, there are the things that are behind us that still leave a mark.  We found out this week that our car was totaled, by no fault of Adam who was driving, but it means we will have one less way of getting around next summer.  That plus the emotional attachment, yes it's only a piece of metal but we'd just managed to pay off our loan on the car and it took us to lots of places together without ever giving us the worry of a pending breakdown.

Another point of sadness is our cat.  We were ridiculously attached to our cat and we found out that Chris' parents found another home for him last week.  A cat's a cat, yes.  But having lived a life with many changes, our cat had been a wonderful companion.  Moving overseas kind of took us by surprise, and so giving him up only came with the territory.  We held on to him as long as we could but he has hopefully moved on to a home where they will love him and appreciate him as much as we did.  Not without a moment of sadness on mine and Chris' part.  

In other, happier, news we found an apartment!  I know Chris posted about is last week, but we have some pictures.  Now, we've only been in about a week and so it's still pretty bare bones.  We had to buy things like a fridge and a washer - basically, almost everything except a bed, closet, and some built in cabinets in the living room.

We've also found out that the way to pay bills it to go to 7-eleven.  You bring your bill and the money, and they take the stub and money and voila!  You have electricity for another month.  You can do practically anything at 7-11, and they're everywhere!  You also get your garbage bags there.  Chris jokes that soon we'll be able to vote at 7-11.

Anyways, here we are...

It's getting a bit breezy

We're sitting in the national immigration office right now waiting so that I can apply for my Alien Resident Certificate. Exciting stuff.

Looking outside, it's cloudy and windy this afternoon, foreshadowings of the typhoon that's coming our way. Tis will be our first typhoon, which, if I understand correctly, is basically the same thing as a hurricane, but in the Pacific. Not sure if we should be worried at all. Everyone else seems to be going about business as usual. I think typhoons might be one of those fact-of-life things, like snow in the Midwest or heat waves in the Southwest, all things that Northwesterners are not all that accustomed to. So, I guess we'll just have to wait and find out what it's like.

Here is a satellite image of the typhoon and it's projected path. The center will cross the island near the south, and Taipei is located up at the north end. We'll let you know what it's like.

Jet lag... so much fun

We have been in Taipei for a full week. It feels like we've done so much, and yet so little has happened. Let me explain.

After a fun but busy summer seeing our families and so many great friends, we arrived in Taipei last Friday around 11:00 pm local time. Grace's boss and her husband were there to pick us up and thankfully their car has a nice big trunk that was able to accommodate our many bags (and one guitar). Since then, we've been staying with this same couple and devoting most of our energy to finding an apartment. This has meant spending hours looking online at various sites, getting help from bilingual friends and coworkers to call and  set up appointments, and then navigating the subways, streets and back alleys of Taipei in order to find these places.

Throughout this process we've had a number of reality checks and disappointments, but there have been some good things too. We are greatly indebted to Ariel, the librarian at Grace's school who has helped us by making countless phone calls to landlords and agents on our behalf. We've also had a lot of success finding our way around Taipei, something that wasn't always so easy in Beijing. It's a small victory, but this week, I'll take it. Running all over the city has also let us get acquainted with new areas that we didn't see during our first visit back in January.

Overall though, this week has been a challenge. It's hard to make big decisions, let alone talk right, when you're jet lagging. Visiting so many places by foot is also exhausting. And, after a summer of living out of our suitcases, we came to Taiwan really looking forward to settling down for a time; but at the moment we're still living out of suitcases. But there is good news. We looked at a good apartment yesterday, and I went back today to negotiate with the agent. Hopefully things will work out, we'll be able to sign the contract tomorrow, and move in this weekend.

There's more to tell, but this is it for now. First post from Taipei. We'll try to make them more frequent this year, especially since we no longer live in a country where the government censors Blogger.

Grace started teacher orientation yesterday; I start on the 27th. Here we go!

UPDATE: Just heard back from the agent, Miss Leu. We got the apartment! We just have to go down tomorrow and sign the lease (and fork over the cash). Guess this means we need to stuff our stuff back into the bags that somehow exploded all over the room during the course of the week.